Sending emotional messages in marriage: Non‐verbal behaviour, sex and communication clarity

Abstract

Videotaped standard content messages sent by married couples to one another with positive, neutral and negative affect were coded for the presence or absence of specific non‐verbal behaviours on the visual channel. Discriminant analyses were conducted to determine differences related to message type, sex of sender, and marital adjustment level. Results paralleled the findings of an earlier study examining the accuracy of decoding these messages. When sending positive messages, wives used more of the behaviours shown to be associated with positive messages (e.g. smiles), while husbands used similar behaviours (eyebrow raises and flashes) for both positive and negative messages. Thus, it is not surprising that it was particularly for positive messages that females showed the greater encoding skill. When differences by marital adjustment level were assessed for each sex, no differences were found for females on any of the message types. High marital adjustment husbands, however, smiled more on positive and neutral messages, while low marital adjustment husbands used more eyebrow flashes on positive messages. When sending positive messages, high marital adjustment husbands, like wives, used more of the behaviours which discriminate positive messages. Finally, accurate encoders of both sexes were more likely to use the more non‐verbal behaviours associated with the particular message type they were sending than were poor encoders.